P12-121: If You can’t Take a Joke

Project 2012: Day 121

When I did my national service, 2 years in the South African Air Force, we had a saying:

“If you can’t take a joke, you shouldn’t of signed up!”

It was a particularly ironic and cruel saying, because none of us had signed up, we were all conscripted. (Actually I had naturalised and applied for Permanent Force, so this was just fulfilling a commitment I was aware of)

But it’s true for any role you consider today.

Miss22, my daughter, is in her final year of nursing, and doing a placement in Randwick. Her first time in the OT and she had to deal with a belligerent, and downright rude surgeon. He literally swore at young, inexperienced nurses. “If you can’t take a joke…”

I’ve managed plenty of IT consultants, and technologists, who at the end of a particularly hard month of travel and work, have been faced with expenses and timesheets. “If you can’t take a joke…”

As a barman in Antigua, the job starts at 2am when you have to clean up the vomit, and clear the bottles from the pub. “If you can’t take a joke…”

Whatever you dream job is, there will be a proportion of the job that is tedious, boring, frustrating, or downright annoying. That’s ok.

What’s not ok is expecting that the grass is greener on the other side. It isn’t. Or if it is, we have another saying, “Greener grass has more manure, and needs more mowing”